New University of California President Janet Napolitano visited the system's San Diego campus Thursday, where she talked with faculty about engineering and science research and attended a sunset cocktail reception at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It was the eighth day on the job for Napolitano, who previously served as the director of US Homeland Security and as governor of Arizona.

In a brief conversation with U-T San Diego, Napolitano smiled and said she was "holding up" well on a listening tour she's conducting throughout the entire UC system. She also noted that she was happy to learn earlier in the day that Alice Munro had won the Nobel Prize in literature.

Napolitano said during the reception that she'd gone from the Calit2 technology incubator where, "I was virtually in the future and virtually in ancient ruins in Jordan and Egypt," to a medical and health sciences complex, "where we really saw the future of medical training," and Scripps, whose research and "will help guide policy makers now and in the future, not only (on) the state of our oceans, but how that impacts climate change and the world."